Tibor Uhrín
We all remember when the Slovak women used to recycle worn coats into quilts, underwear into dusters and old fabrics into woven carpets. Now, when we can buy everything we can imagine we will soon face the problem of disposal of waste our civilisation produce in the name of progress and exchange. One of options is to identify new utilisation of waste in the field of craft and design.
Now crafts undergo various changes and are under new influences and creative impacts as design overlaps crafts. Combination of craft as a skill, design (creativity) and author´s personality may produce quality in new materials, even if collected at a dump. Such correlations remain irrelevant for traditional crafts and environmentalism. They are important for a newly forming value. Purpose is to change attitude and to have cultivated consumers who value environmental aspects of items they use.
Producing originally-shaped waste (or its parts) combinations or combining them with non-waste materials may result in new objects. Original function of an object transforms into another function. Good thing is that “design celebrities” become involved in creative waste using and collecting. Now, craft and design is a laboratory of artistic and technical experiments that are used for consumption needs. The ideas produced here may affect and define new taste of today´s consumer.